Loading and off-loading of petroleum products into the tank compartments of transport trucks and from the tank compartments into various types of storage tanks are common procedures known in the art. A tank truck may have a tank with two or more separate compartments which often contain different fuels such as various grades of unleaded gasoline, diesel, fuel oils and kerosene. The tank truck typically features a manifold comprised of individual liquid connections for each of the tank compartments, with a manual shutoff valve at the end of each connection to control the product flow out of the compartment. When dispensing the products, the truck driver typically connects short sections of hose from the compartment being dispensed to the suction intake connection of one of the pumps on the truck. Once connected, the driver manually opens the proper shutoff valve to allow the product to flow out of the compartment and into the pump suction intake. The truck driver must take care to not mix the products by connecting the wrong fuel type to the wrong pump suction intake. Additionally, during this manual connection and disconnection of the short hoses between the different truck tank compartments and the pump suction intakes, a large quantity of fuel may be spilled from these hoses. It is also common practice for the driver to have to return product to a tank compartment from a delivery hose in order to clear that hose of one product before dispensing the next dissimilar one. This generally requires the driver to climb on top of the tank truck with the delivery hose and open the manhole on the top of the tank compartment in order to discharge the product back into the tank.
Prior art manifolds are typically manufactured for a particular truck and sized according to the number of compartments. The typical life of a tank truck chassis is from seven to ten years, with the life of a manifold of fourteen to twenty years. When a tank truck chassis is retired, the manifold may be removed and installed on another tank on another truck chassis. However, these manifolds have a fixed size and thus are only usable on trucks that have the same number of compartments as the retired trucks from which the manifolds were removed. Having been manufactured for a specific number of compartments, this can cause delays and inconvenience in the manufacture of new tank trucks as well because each truck, depending on the number of compartments, is matched with a manifold of corresponding size necessitating the ordering or stocking of many different manifold sizes and styles by a tank truck manufacturer.
Furthermore, in prior art systems, access to the API fuel loading and unloading valves on the side of the tank truck may be restricted only by a lock on the API cap or by a cabinet enclosure around the API adaptors with a lock on the door. These locks may be easily overcome to gain access to the fuel.
Additionally, when dispensing a product, a driver may inadvertently pump the product into the wrong storage tank. For example, the driver may inadvertently unload gasoline into a diesel storage tank resulting in product loss and the added time and expense to clean out the storage tank, as well as the inherent safety risks associated with the wrong product ending up in the wrong storage tank.